You Know What I’m Grateful For Today?

Well, I’ll tell you. I’m grateful for flip-flops and rain boots for me . . . because I am far too lazy to tie shoes on myself (and while I wear flip-flops through plenty of non-appropriate weather moments, I really can’t get away with wearing them all winter – hence the need for rain boots).

And I’m grateful for flip-flops, rain boots AND cowboy boots for my little kids . . . because I am also far too lazy to tie their shoes (Jesse has even been wearing cowboy boots to church most weeks lately – which makes me laugh a little for some reason).


(Note sock monkey in the picture. We probably ought to get some cowboy boots for him as well)

Also, I am grateful for this funny kid of mine.

He is, perhaps, slightly less destructive lately (though he still constantly needs to be taking things apart and trying to put them together again – which often fails), but he has, instead, taken on a new habit of absolutely not stopping in his requests for something until they are met.

“Mom, could you peel me an orange?”
”Yes, in a minute, after I change Anders.”
”MOM!! Could you peel me an ORANGE!!”
”Jesse, I said in a minute. You need to wait a second.”
Sobbing/yelling, “MOM!!! PEEL ME AN ORANGE!!!”

It’s a new kind of maddening . . . it’s like he did all the physical wearing me down he could with his breaking and mess making, so now he has turned to mentally wearing me down. BUT, he isn’t always repeating requests or demanding answers. He sometimes, instead, has taken to speaking a language I don’t really have to respond to at all . . . because I don’t know how. It could best be called “gibberish” perhaps? He loves to cast his English aside and speak in pure nonsense. The other kids (and sometimes even Mike) think it is funny enough that they will hold happily little conversations with him in gibberish, and I often feel very much like I am watching a Charlie Brown episode where only the adults talk (“mwahmwah mwah mwah mwah”).

Well Nancy, you say, that doesn’t sound like grateful. You said you were grateful for him. Well, sometimes the things we are grateful for don’t make a bit of sense, I guess, because grateful is exactly what I feel when I look at this little boy of mine.

To end, here is a little conversation I overheard between this little boy and Penny just the other day:

Penny (talking to Anders): “Hey little stinky pants! Hi little stinky pants!”
Jesse (in indignation at the cruelty aimed at his young new brother): “No, Penny! He’s not!”
Penny: “I know, Jesse. I’m just calling him that.”
Jesse: “Oh,” he thinks for a minute, then turns to Anders and in his sweetest voice says, “Hi poopy Anders!”

Yes, very touching and sweet . . .